Bishop
Standing again in the courtyard of Crossroads Keep, I couldn't help but notice that in ten months since I'd left them, at least they'd gained some wisdom and left heavy guard on the gate. Whether credit for that went to Kana and Nevalle, or whether it was Lianna's decision, I didn't know.
The entire way here I had been debating who'd be the first to spring at my throat. Casavir would be very happy to do some holy smiting, I was sure. My gold was on Lianna, though—pissing off a woman was generally a bad idea. Pissing off a woman with the capability to take on three or four orcs solo with a sword was probably sheer lunacy. But I'd gone and done it, and thrown away possibly the one good chance I'd have had for something brighter in my life than just waiting for it to end.
I found out early in life that nobody cared for me. My father, when my mam was out of the whiskey bottle long enough for me to ask, was apparently "away". That avoidance of the subject and the pitying whispers of the others in Redfallows Watch, led me to understand long years later what must have been the truth. I was just somebody's by-blow, and in the villages of the Fallowmark, that caused talk. Whoever he was, gold-bedecked noble or dirt-scrabbling tinker, he probably never knew about me. He likely wouldn't have cared if he had.
Without a dad and with my mam barely there in any sense that mattered, an old trapper took enough interest in me to teach me a little woodscraft. Of course, his idea of a life lesson was to give me a skinning knife one night when he'd been heavy on the ale and tell me to try and stab him. Confused, I attacked him, actually got him in the leg and drew blood, at which point he growled at me to run if I wanted to live. I was six years old and scared as all the hells of what he might do to me, so I scrambled out of his shack, still clutching the knife. A few hours later I'd calmed down enough to remember some things; how to hide my tracks, how to make a rough shelter. Urlan still found me three days later deep in the forest. He'd just laughed mockingly, told me I'd passed his test, and gave me the knife as my reward. I still carried it even now.
A year and a half I'd spent trapping and hunting with him, before the raiders came. Three raids in the last year had made the villagers stupid and scared; this time they only put up feeble resistance while their homes were torched. So when the Luskans saw me, figured me for a likely prospect and snatched me up…easy choice for the villagers. Nobody was going to buck up the nerve to fight and save Kahlendra Rettikar's half-wild starveling bastard son. Obviously they decided that gallant stands and daring rescues were best left to the likes of paladins.
One wondered where the hells the paladins, who were only to happy to declare how devoted they were to the plight of the helpless, were in those years when Luskan was kidnapping children left and right. Gods knew paladins were very possibly some of the most annoying people in the whole of Faerûn. Bunch of hypocrites, and all the while pretending to holiness and righteousness when they clearly so loved the bloodlust of being at the front of a battle and smiting foes. So touchy, too, about their gods and their honor, always out to save your soul instead of your life. And if you looked at them cross-eyed they whimpered about what it might do to make them fall.
No paladins in Luskan, of course—the city spawned none from its black heart and none were stupid enough to come for a visit. My opinion of them came later: the first paladin I met was at the siege of Neverwinter, or rather, a former paladin. I was sixteen and after nine years of the life of a slave, they slapped a battered old longsword in my hand and told me I was now a soldier, so I'd better go kill some Neverwinterians. Leading our army was Aribeth de Tylmarande, the former paladin of Tyr who had recently experienced a change of heart—having your lover wrongly hanged tended do that—and turned into Shar's blackguard.
I was only a rank or two behind her while she gave orders to the captains, blue-grey eyes glowing with an unholy light as she stared at the pile of rubble that marked the breach in the walls of the city she now so hated.
Already there was a little fighting going on inside the thick stone walls, and we could hear the battle cries and the roar of flames. Now and again on the breeze I faintly heard someone singing, a young man's strong voice. I didn't recognize the song, not even from those few deeply buried memories of a time before Luskan.
But at our head, Aribeth went still as a doe in the forest with the fireglow glinting off the black enamel of her armor. With a half-elf's keen hearing, she obviously heard more than we did, as she turned on her heel and hailed the captain of my division. "Do you hear that singing?"
Laheer had cocked his head to hear it better for a moment. "Aye, well enough, I suppose."
"Give word to your troops, Captain Laheer. When you find that boy—and he will wear Tyr's symbol—he is mine. I want him alive, and captured without mortal harm." Staring intently at him until he acknowledged, she nodded. "I have other matters I must attend to. But today, may your swords run red with the blood of Neverwinter."
Laheer had waited until she was out of earshot, and spat. "Crazy bitch, she is: wants me to risk my soldiers to catch some kid so she can play with him before she kills him. Paladins; they're all loopy bastards…blackguards too, they're just paladins that wised up."
"Holiness rots your brain," Sergeant Naerroth grunted. "Just like the pox." Laheer laughed and sounded the call to battle.
Ever since then, I'd refused to scout for paladins: the one time I tried he felt obliged to try and save my soul for Lathander. My threats and my dagger convinced him otherwise. I'd still well shared Laheer's opinion on the sanity of paladins when Duncan strong-armed me into Lianna's company, and of course she already had Casavir traveling with her, much to my displeasure. Being around that much self-congratulatory holiness made my skin crawl.
I did have one question answered when we rescued Shandra that first time. Whoever the singer was, of course he was a paladin. Entirely surrounded by the githyanki, Casavir had started a battle-hymn to Tyr to call for aid. The words were all in Thorass—Old Common—pretty much gibberish to modern ears, but I recognized the tune well enough as the one I'd heard over the ruin of Neverwinter's walls.
We didn't catch the man that long-ago day, and the blackguard got talked out of the fight and surrendered—obviously a paladin, in the end—and was executed for her trouble. But despite virtually no training, I "distinguished" myself at that battle by stealthily taking out almost a dozen Neverwinter fighters before the day was done. That was noticed and resulted in my being selected to train as an assassin. Four years of apprenticeship, and I took the skills they gave me, intending to turn the talents back on them at Redfallows Watch and slip the hated Luskan leash.
Obviously that didn't quite work out like I'd planned. The people of the village died like the mindless sheep they were even though I tried to make them save their own lives. I was still young enough then to feel some kind of bitterness at that, and I managed to take down a good five of my companions before they shot me full of arrows in return. Seemed like I dealt in double-crosses even then: I'd betrayed my home village and seen them slaughtered, and betrayed the Circle of Blades as well. Lying there, feeling myself slide into the embrace of darkness, I thought it was a good day to die, my time to end the empty nothingness I'd known since I was seven years old.
Then of course, Duncan Farlong had to wander into the burning ruins and being a noble twit, he searched for survivors. He found only me. Even with most of my Luskan clothes ruined, he must have known the truth—I could see it in his eyes in the next three weeks when he shoved healing potions down my throat as I recovered from the burns and wounds that permanently scarred me. He never stated it explicitly, but in his usual nonchalant manner, he let me know that he expected me to repay his kindness. After debating the pleasures of opening his veins as thanks, I couldn't escape that I owed him my life, for what little it was worth. Gods, how I hated him for ruining my bid for freedom and binding me to him with jesses of obligation like some damn tame hawk.
I spent the next six years showing him my contempt for the life he'd saved. When you had no special cares for survival, each fleeting day was all that mattered. I went out on jobs, scouting for whoever would pay me in gold, all business and my focus sharp out in the wild where any misstep could cost a man his life. When I came back to town and life started to weigh down on me again, I lost myself in the ephemeral things that were the only pleasures I allowed myself: drinking ale, getting a whore for the night, spilling a bit of blood, or sometimes just lying in my room in the Flagon with a pipe of khabbis and enjoying the sheer absence of thought it brought.
Nothing mattered to me; I definitely didn't matter to anyone. I drifted along like an autumn leaf in the river's current, without consequence, without commitment, just doing whatever I pleased. I made a fair amount of enemies for my perfect willingness to trade sides in a heartbeat if the gold was better or if my current employer pissed me off enough. Someday, I'd thought, I'd meet up with someone who decided they wanted to kill me, and that didn't bother me at all. I'd rot away just like every other worm-riddled carcass and that would be it.
Then the farm girl got herself kidnapped, and Duncan shoved me in with the bunch of do-gooders that had been haunting the Flagon the past months. I could hardly refuse to repay his debt and finally be free of him. As for Lianna I'd been noncommittal; I'd told her to get lost when she'd approached me earlier. But she was a sister of the wild and capable enough that she hadn't gotten killed yet, so that gave her a few marks in my eyes.
Oddly, maybe because she had such a fondness for the misfits of the world—we were more of a traveling freak show than anything—she hadn't judged me on that first outing. And because of that, and having no other good opportunities on the horizon for distraction, I stuck around. The longer I stayed, the more I wanted to. Probably for the first time in years, I'd had someone look at me and see something more than a piece of human trash or, in the case of some pathetically bored women, a man who got her all hot and bothered by not knowing if I'd bed her or stab her.
She took whatever crap I gave her and answered right back without an air of smug righteousness; and she dealt out the orders while having the brains to listen to the opinions of the others in our group. In spite of myself, I respected that, and her obvious capabilities. She was a good-looking woman too, and I couldn't help but notice that.
If not for the paladin, I would have had her. She obviously enough cared about me to treat me with respect, and even if she had too much of a do-gooder complex, she was willing enough to not play fully by the rules if it achieved the desired result. A hidebound hymn-groveler should have been the last kind of man to catch her interest. But by the time I got forced in with them, he was already giving her longing looks. I'd heard about Casavir Erelissohn before; a knight and a paladin killing a noble's son tended to make tongues wag, and his fleeing the city into the wilderness to escape justice only made it all the more delicious. Pierval Valessar had put a bounty on his head for fully two years: he'd promised to pay five thousand in gold. People had sold their own children for less, let alone a paladin on the run, so it was a wonder Casavir had escaped capture long enough for Pierval to cool down and rescind the offer.
By the time I met up with him, with Lianna's help he'd also killed Mordren Greendale. A regular budding scourge of the nobility: I could almost have liked him for that. As for his intentions with Lianna, I wasn't too worried. Harmless idiot, I'd always thought, although far more entertaining than Grobnar because he was at least aware enough of desire to smolder with its repression. But he'd gone for completely innocent weapons training into the woods with Shandra and Lianna dozens of times. I'd sneaked up on them once out of sheer curiosity. Casavir, as usual, proved a massive disappointment: only a paladin would be totally alone with two pretty women and really just be interested in giving them sword lessons.
He hadn't been too amused when I'd told him to do all of us a favor and just find a comely wench and bed her already. They might have been largely celibate, enough so to make them complete bastards to be around because of the sexual repression, but I doubted there was a paladin in Faerûn who hadn't taken advantage at least sometimes of the legions of starry-eyed twits who happily would welcome a holy warrior into their bed for the night. So the whole idea of him acting like a tongue-tied shy virgin to draw in Lianna was annoying as all the hells. Whether he did it deliberately or not, at least I didn't lie to her, or myself.
I'd thought either he was the stupidest man on the whole of Toril and genuinely had no idea how longingly she looked at him in return, or else Tyr really had made him sacrifice his balls both literally and figuratively. Well, a few more months, my thoughts ran, and my chance would come. So many women were smitten with paladins, until they hopefully came to their senses and realized that the idiot was more interested in her soul than her body. Just a little longer and she'd be more ready to entertain offers from me for what the paladin was never going to give her. By that point I was willing to admit that just by simple example and her lack of agenda concerning me, she actually had inspired me a bit to give a damn.
I'd kept myself pretty amused at the farce the two of them made until just after Shandra was killed at Ammon's Haven, and they loped off into the woods again to practice. About the only good I could say for paladins was that they were handy in a fight, devoted as fanatically to training for combat as to whining hymns. My own talents ran more to ranged combat and the subtle dagger between the ribs. I was practical enough to not let pride get in the way of victory: I'd readily admit he could tear me to pieces in an honest melee duel. So if it came to a fight between us, I knew I'd have to avoid a direct confrontation if possible and tip the odds my way however I could, and hope to drop him before he could carve me up.
If he was merciless towards himself in pursuing perfection with a blade, he ran Lianna equally hard. So after a good three hours of beating the shit out of each other inspired by pent-up frustration, of course they always came back looking tired. The venison stew was just about ready, and I'd assumed that day when they wandered in exhausted as ever from sparring, it was business as usual.
Then I caught the scent, a whiff of something familiarly musky. Probably only Sand and I would have picked up on it, and he was back in Neverwinter. But human, elf, tiefling, whatever race: no matter how people tried to dress it up with pretty words, we rutted just like animals, and like them, we inevitably smelled of it. It was faint, very faint, so they must have cleaned up at one of the forest pools or streams. But there was still a trace of it on their clothes.
I couldn't believe it. The implication was obvious, and I caught the few half-hidden meaningful glances and smiles between them, as fiercely as I was watching. I'd spent most of the evening as we settled down for the night with my brain churning with all-too-vivid images of the two of them together out in the woods. She'd wasted no time. Must have finally loosened his tongue enough to get him to admit he loved her, and she'd moved right away to let him fully claim her as his. I'd never had a chance.
Seething with my anger, I'd drawn first watch that night, and stared at him a long while in the firelight, knowing I could kill the gith, my watch partner, in a soundless heartbeat, and move right on to him.
Cunning bastard and my bad luck; he'd been traveling on his own long enough that while on the road, even in sleep he took care to not be ambushed. Back to the fire so nobody coming from the woods could surprise him, he slept with his head resting on one elbow of his folded arms, while the other arm and his shoulder served to entirely cover the vulnerability of his throat. Only a little of the back of his neck was exposed above the collar of his hauberk, and while a well-aimed dagger thrust there would sever his spine and kill him, it lacked the sinister elegance of the assassin's "red smile" across the neck. And never let the implication stand that I didn't still prefer my work to have some flair back then; mindless butchery I left to barbarians and Luskan twits.
I'd jabbed him in the ribs hard with the toe of my boot, and he started abruptly, automatically reaching for a throwing dagger. "It's your watch now—rise and shine."
He'd glowered at me a moment in the firelight, then threw off his cloak and sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning. "All right," he finally acknowledged, reaching for his sword.
"Little slow tonight, Casavir," I said mockingly. "Bandits would have left you for dead already. Did our dear captain give your sword such a thorough workout that you're so tired?"
"Excuse me?" His eyes narrowed as he looked at me, fleeting suspicion in his expression at my deliberate double entendre. I could read him like a book, the thought written across his face: Does the ranger know?
I'd smiled easily, playing innocent. "Just walk canny about it. Your weapons teaching might be turning her into a regular Valkyrfel, but it doesn't look good for a man, let alone a paladin, if you can be bested by a mere woman."
"I didn't ask for your advice," he bit off with a frown. "And I would be a damn fool to deny her and our quest every help I can give just as a matter of my own pride. I hope," he leveled me with a cold look, "Bishop, that you can say the same."
Through half-closed eyes after I lay down, I saw him watching her as she slept, and smiling thoughtfully to himself. I stared at her a moment. "Lying bitch," I'd whispered to myself, rolling over and turning my back on both of them.
I wasn't a man for vows, seeing as I'd long prided myself on not allowing myself to be bound to any master, whether man or god. But that night, tasting bile, I'd sworn that they would both pay. Him, I hated because he was a man who could have charmed any woman into his bed with that damn paladin charisma, but he had to steal the one woman who should have been mine. Her, I despised for making me believe for the first time in years that I had any kind of hope for something more, all the while playing me for a fool. I'd decided that I would hurt them as they'd hurt me. The time wasn't right yet, though; I could be patient and wait for the right chance to spring my attack.
After she came back from Neverwinter with a knight's cloak, she asked to speak to me in the godswood she'd planted in the Keep's walls. "I know you don't follow any deity," she'd said, "so don't think I'm trying to convert you. But it's easier for rangers to find words in some bit of the wild, I think."
I realized now she couldn't have won in any way she tried to break the news that I already knew. If she'd tried to be kind and say that I was a perfectly fine man, I'd have laughed at her. If she offered that she couldn't love me because I was an evil bastard, I'd have told her she was absolutely right on both counts. She chose her usual way: simple honesty. Later I'd think that it was a mark of a friend's respect that she didn't try to buy me off with lies, but at the time, it was hard truth to hear.
"I don't have illusions that I need to plan for the long term," she'd said, looking at me with troubled eyes. "A good part of me thinks that few of us will survive past the final battle; I almost certainly won't. But since my time is short…it can't be you, Bishop, I'm sorry. You may become a good man in time, and I think you've already started to see that there's another way to go. And I want," her voice suddenly low, "to help you there, as your friend. But you're too hard, too unforgiving. You can't allow for simple human weakness in anyone, and you can't trust them. As you are, you can desire me, but I don't think you can truly love me."
I'd acted my part well, reassuring her that yeah, though I still didn't like Casavir, I wasn't going to gut him some night in revenge. She'd smiled, obviously relieved.
After that I spent eight months of playing along as the loyal companion, waiting for my chance. Eight months of watching the two of them grow ever closer, seeing how they lit up in each other's company, how they shut out the world when they talked together, completely absorbed in each other. How he made her laugh and smile, how they came downstairs too many mornings looking tired but pleased. It should have been me, I thought, and my rage and resolve to punish them grew each time.
I saw my chance during the siege and seized it. Dumb thing to do, really; had Crossroads Keep been taken because I wrecked the gates, the whole Sword Coast would have fallen under shadow. Even I wasn't that evil as to desire that. But at that moment all I could think about was that my moment had come, and I'd savored the shattered look on her face when I'd revealed my lies and treason to her so softly that only she, Casavir, and Khelgar heard, before I turned and ran.
It still wasn't enough. I joined Garius with the promise that he'd let me fight against them, and that he'd guarantee that Casavir was mine alone to kill. Then there would be no impediment to my claiming her, and I figured my betrayal and forcing her to watch him die would be punishment enough. That was my sole incentive: I didn't give a damn about his cause. But even after my stabbing Lianna in the back, even when she finally heard the whole of the unholy things I'd done and she spared me, and Garius started trying to order me around like a hired hand—that settled it. I was more than happy to also leave his service and abandon the whole lot of them to fight it out. Me, I'd just survive as I always did.
I spent the next three months in Neverwinter, up to my usual tricks. Maybe even more so than usual, because all too often, her parting words, barely more than a whisper of rage for no ears but mine, writhed within like flame. I should have seen this long ago. Go and be as truly you are then, faithless…friendless…forsaken…a fucking coward in every way. You'll live, Bishop, and someday realize what you threw away.
Too bad she wasn't there to see her curse work on me. Finally springing my betrayal and seeing the hurt in her eyes had been a few hours of sweet, hot pleasure, but unfortunately, I didn't realize the truth until it was too late. Treason might have presented herself as a tempting little minx ripe for the taking, but really, it was a shackle-binding marriage with a hag who constantly harped at you and kept you awake nights. You could never get rid of it.
She was right, much as I swore at her memory for it. I'd had a chance for something lasting, even if it didn't include bedding her. And I'd thrown it away because of the paladin. In the end, I handed Casavir total victory without a fuss. He'd won the biggest battle that day in the Neverwinter Wood when she chose him for her lover, but he won the war when I'd removed myself entirely from her friendship by doing the one thing she couldn't forgive.
Those were depressing thoughts to keep me company. I got to Neverwinter, and it took me a few days to recognize that it struck me as off that people weren't pouncing on me to arrest me.
The only thing I ever got was some disdainful stares and a few growls about cowardice from those who had heard of my running away from the battle, and gradually it dawned on me that I'd got away with my actual betrayal. The idiots didn't even know it was me that had sabotaged the stronghold and almost sent the Sword Coast under shadow; in the rapidly spreading bard's tales of the last stand of the missing Knight Captain and her brave companions, it was inevitably the dark magic of the eerie undead army that broke the gates of Crossroads Keep.
I kept my mouth shut, able to know a good thing when I saw it. If Nasher wasn't seeing fit to send me to dance the hempen jig for treason, I certainly wasn't going to clue him in. So for the next months, I buried myself in a little freelance work here and there for those who asked no questions. A few pieces of gold pressed into my palm, leaving it just as quickly, trying to forget her curse on me, and trying to forget her.
I'd resorted to wenching for about a month until I realized that every whore I picked was dark-haired, fair-skinned, curvy and lithe, and I used them harder than was my habit. If I ever said her name while I was with them, they had the sense to never mention it. The first time after that little revelation dawned on me, put lightly, the girl got the coin more for her silence about my sudden embarrassing lack of enthusiasm than for any services performed. After that, I stayed away from the brothels in favor of other, less risky diversions.
I haunted the taverns—not the Flagon though—going through ale and mead, cheap and rough, by the tankard. I got to know the bare-knuckle fighting clubs well enough on the nights when I craved blood and pain; whether it was my own or someone else's didn't matter much.
Or I'd head to the dens of the Painted Wyvern and spend a few hours "hunting the griffon", as the codeword at the door went, with the blissful relaxation of khabbis, or on a few really bad evenings, the hard-hitting daze of opherim.
Even Karnwyr avoided me, and kept his silence except for a short word now and again. Last time I'd been in this kind of funk, it had been after Redfallows Watch when I ended up swearing off Luskan and my assassin's training. I should have figured that now that I was brought low again, I was due for the gods to mess with my head one more time.
I'd been in the Merchant Quarter late in Hammer coming home from a pretty satisfying brawl against a berserker in the Hruna Cross with my knuckles split open and a black eye, the unbearable edge taken off. I thought I could maybe go sleep for a few hours in peace after that; dawn was just about breaking. As I passed an alley, keeping to the pre-dawn shadows, I heard a faint hiss of "Get the kid!"
Looking towards the voice, two men were standing underneath an open window at the back of a house in shadow-skin clothes, one of them wrestling with a boy of about eight. A kidnapping; they weren't uncommon in these days with Brelaina more concerned with her prestige than her duties as usual. The tattered remnants of the Docks gangs were warring for supremacy and that took coin and power. Taking a hostage for ransom, or to torture or kill them to send a message to someone who didn't pay proper respect…happened at least half a dozen times that I was aware of.
I'd stared at the boy a long moment, remembering being seven years old and fighting like all the hells against a Luskan on horseback. I earned a bloody nose and a few other assorted bruises for my trouble there when he ran me down. Two days later, near the Luskan border, after I tried to escape again for the third time, he added to that tally with a deliberately broken leg. His wine-thick breath washed over me as he hissed in my ear, slinging me over his saddlebow like a dead deer while I tried not to sob with the pain, "Not going to run so fast now, are you, cubling?" I'd definitely enjoyed killing him thirteen years later at Redfallows Watch. And after that, every Luskan I killed, I reasoned, was one fewer to make more of me.
Paladins annoyed me; so did patriotic idealists, sycophants, naïve morons, and politicians. But I had to admit to actual black, fierce loathing that I reserved for those that used children to their own ends and didn't give a crap how they warped them in the process: the kidnappers and ransomers, the kidsmen with their flocks of young forced thieves, the slavers to the south, the perverts who went to brothels to lie with children, or even those who went closer to home and raped their own daughters.
I'd hesitated a moment, somewhat torn by the scene before me. Even if this was a spoiled merchant's brat who was probably pissing himself and whimpering, he was just a kid, and shouldn't have his fingers or ears sent home as grisly messages for whatever his parents hadn't done.
When one of them squalled "Bastard bit me!" that settled it. The kid was no coward, and he had the sense to get out of there. After being dropped like a sack of meal, he scrabbled to his feet and ran past me like Kezef was hot on his heels. I had to give some kind of respect to a kid who'd fight like that and had the brains to not get in over his head.
But they'd be back the next night, or lurking around a corner, until they got him. If I were a more honorable man, I'd have stepped into the alley and openly challenged them, told them to stop picking on small children and face me instead, and so on. But I wasn't. Keeping to the shadows, the first warning they had of my presence was when I buried my dagger in the middle of the bigger one's back.
He let out a startled grunt as the force of my blow sent the air from his lungs, and it slowly dribbled away into a hissing sigh as he fell to his knees and then into a crumpled heap. "Want to try someone more your size?" I challenged the rat-faced one.
"Stay out of this," he snarled, clutching his bleeding hand where the boy bit him.
"See, there's a problem, scum. Your partner seems," I stepped around the body of said partner, carefully avoiding the pool of blood, "to have run into my dagger—how tragic. I'd suggest you go back to your handler and tell him that picking on this kid could be, oh, I don't know, somewhat hazardous."
"Got a name to give Bharrin?" he said reluctantly.
"No. Now get lost before I change my mind."
He scurried off, and I put my dagger away just in time to feel myself grabbed. Reaching for it again, cursing my stupidity in not thinking of there maybe being a backup squad, I finally heard the high-toned shriek of "Sir! Thank you, oh gods, thank you!"
I was let go and turned to see a lovely young woman standing there after hugging me for dear life, the kid standing at her side. "Huh?" I managed, staring at them.
She glanced down at the body lying at my feet, then looked at me and saw my black eye and scraped knuckles. Her green eyes lit up. "Oh, dear sir; I'm so very sorry you've been injured in the fight, but in doing so, you saved Kellas—my son—and I thank you."
I must have had a look of total incomprehension on my face. "Kell told me that when he ran out of the alley he almost collided with you walking past. Your heart's kind, for you to see his danger and take on this scum," she kicked him with a vengeance, "so that he could get away."
"Eh…don't worry about it," I muttered, trying to slink away. Nothing doing: the merchantwoman was like a damn hurricane, and every chance I tried to take to explain and get away, she just pressed her case all the harder. So just after dawn, I found myself the honored breakfast guest of Hannelle Rannishore, the foremost silk-seller of Neverwinter, and her son Kellas. An Ilmaterian healer was summoned to tend to my minor wounds, and she fiercely fended off the inquiries of Brelaina's men about the dead body in her alley. When I left her door near noontide it was with her eternal gratitude and her insistence on giving me a fat purse of gold.
If Lianna, wherever she was, could have seen it, she'd have been laughing herself sick. What came next would have amused her even more. I crawled into bed and slept. When I woke up in the evening, despite the lingering bruises from the tavern fight, I felt an odd sensation come over me.
Lying there staring at the timbers of the ceiling, it took me a good while to identify it. Satisfaction: and it wasn't the sly, self-congratulatory kind of having pulled a fast one over on a widow's love for her kid. Mistaken as she was about my motives, I'd still kept the kidnapper's claws out of her son, and well, to hear words besides the snarls of curses on my name…maybe it just caught me at the right time, but it tugged at echoes in my head of another woman who'd praised my abilities and not assumed the worst of me at first sight.
I couldn't say it was by any means an all-encompassing thing, but amidst the storm of chaos that seemed to have defined my life, there was now a strange, tiny corner of quiet. I'd sought that calm so desperately at the bottom of a tankard, in the sweet smoke of khabbis, and it always evaporated after a short time. As that day went on, I couldn't help a deep trepidation that this bit of peace too would pass, and I'd be left to glumly ponder once again how to get out of my own head for the night.
But it stayed with me that day and into the next. After half a tenday, I let myself believe it was mine to keep.
Almost a tenday later, I was in the Silver Stag with a tankard of its excellent silvermead, treating myself a bit since I was soundly in coin. A moon elf started trying to make friends with the distracted owner's lonely little girl playing with her puppy behind the bar. Seemingly innocent, his words, but there was a sinister slyness to them. I thought in less than a month he'd be inviting her to come out with him so he could buy her a present—yeah right. The only unwrapping that was on his mind was hers. Watching him with something like disgust, I thought about the kernel of calm that the business with the Rannishore kid bought me.
So I picked up a chair and broke it across his back. Just an experiment, really, to see if what had transpired in that alley was only a fluke. But in the ensuing melee—everybody loves a good tavern brawl, even in civilized Neverwinter—I got him by the throat and snarled in his ear, "Try to play nasty uncle with a little girl, and next time you'll have something more lasting than bruises, elf."
His breath was a harsh sob and he stunk of fear. "Of course," he whimpered. He scurried away when I let him up, though not without a good kick to his bony elven ass to speed him along. As for me, I sneaked off before the mess cleared up and a finger could be pointed at me for starting the whole thing.
Next morning, I woke up once again feeling strangely fine. I must have had a stupid grin on my face, since for the first time in weeks Karnwyr ventured to mind-talk to me. "OK this morning?"
"Yeah," I said, ruffling his fur a bit as I reached for my boots. "I think so."
"Good," as he padded towards the door, glancing back at me with knowing eyes in the dark mask of his fur, "been whimpering like pup for moons, Bishop."
I stared after him. Well, that was one way to put it. He always did have too damn much sense; I'd raised him from an orphaned pup that I found in the snows near Moonlake five years ago, the only survivor of his litter. If not for the companion's bond between us, I'd have been entirely alone. It was a bit sad to think that my only friend was a wolf, but then again, maybe not. Animals were honest with themselves and each other; if he chose to stay with me it was for good reason, despite anything I'd done. "Hey," following him downstairs. "Have you ever…ah…thought about leaving?"
"Wolves need pack to survive," he thought swiftly. "Together you and I pack…alone, we die. I protect you, you protect me. Pack brothers." He hesitated a moment, adding, "Too long in city, maybe?"
I nodded. "We're stuck here for now, Karnwyr. Nobody needs a scout in winter."
"Protecting pups?" he asked with interest. "Two times now."
"Maybe," I said defensively. "Hells, if it lets me sleep at night, I'm willing to do about anything…"
"Better than smoke-weed or drink," laughter in his voice. "Nights past, you stink. But pups need guarding." He paused a moment. "You guard me long ago."
So there it was. Over the next few months, looking after the kids of Neverwinter turned into my new addiction. As I told Karnwyr, it let me sleep at night, dimmed Lianna's accusations about my general worthlessness. And unlike losing myself in khabbis, brawling, or ale, I didn't wake up feeling like crap.
Not that I was becoming a do-gooder by any lights. The adults did nothing for me; they were grown and if they didn't have the sense or strength to look after their own skins, I wasn't going to intercede on their behalf. And I still wasn't rescuing any cats from trees, no matter how much a kid was crying. I didn't have time for that; my concern was with those who were in real danger of being abused.
By day I kept up my usual stuff, keeping up the swagger, advertising for some work. In the areas I was staying in, the rough image was everything, and being openly known as looking out for somebody's brats would lose you a lot of face. I couldn't afford that, especially seeing as I definitely hadn't gone soft. Just because I was taking out some trash didn't mean I was turning into a paladin.
Besides, it was only under the forgiving cover of twilight and shadow when most of the dangers to the kids came crawling out from under a rock. At some point, it moved from just interceding only when I stumbled across a situation, to openly prowling at night for the predators, hoping I'd get the chance to kick their teeth in.
I always kept to the shadow myself on those jobs, and the assassin's training came in handy there—it wouldn't do to be recognized. If I crossed the wrong people it would be too easy to end up floating in the harbor some fine morning.
The Watch members that weren't in the pocket of the gang leaders started talking about the newly-dubbed "Grey Hawk" and his fire-eyed "hell-hound" who were taking out those who preyed on the kids, and I smiled into my ale to hear them expressing some kind of admiration for someone who stepped in where the law just entirely tied their hands. Some cheerfully remembered Watch Lieutenant Lianna Thirsk's eager efforts to end the corruption in the Docks, and were pretty damn happy that someone was lending a hand, even on the quiet.
One night in Ches, I got word—there was always someone who couldn't keep their mouth shut—about a shipment of kids headed for slavery in Thay. I broke into the house in the Merchant District, aided by the dark of a new moon. Smuggling the eight kids out of the cellar where they were being kept was easy when I just told them to shut up and keep moving, but we still made too much noise. The guard and I got into a fight and he knifed me in the side before Karnwyr tore his throat out.
I'd taken some wounds before on my nights out on the prowl; inevitable, since the jobs were rough and the people I was up against equally so. But since I refused to pay tribute to any of Faerûn's pantheon, I didn't have the spells most rangers received from a patron deity. That included basic healing magic. To make up for it I was fairly skilled with herblore, but the burning pain and the constant sticky flow of blood between my fingers told me that this was probably beyond potions.
A little unsteady, I made my way into the first temple I came across, dimly noticing the crimson banners on the walls. The tall, broadly built priest who greeted me, I readily recognized—the merchantwoman had called him two months ago to heal me up after I rescued her boy. So I was in the temple of Ilmater.
He didn't waste time. Murmuring a few words, light surrounded his hands, and as he reached for mine, I braced myself for the fierce stab of pain, like a thousand daggers, that always came when a divine mage used a healing spell on me. Casavir had bluntly explained it to me while patching me up after a battle: the magic of a good-aligned deity didn't much like the evil brewing in me, so the negative reaction of the two meeting in my body hurt like the hells. "Your evil must be minor," he'd pronounced, giving me an almost hopeful look, "since at least you can still be healed by a good mage. So you're better off than Ammon Jerro. He's so riddled with darkness that I'll bet I can't do a thing for him. I'm not sure," he looked concerned, raising an eyebrow, "if it just wouldn't work, or if the adverse reaction might actually kill him."
Just before I passed out, I noticed that strangely, it didn't hurt.
